Of Dogs and Duty

Oh yes, I'm neglectful, I know...I haven't updated in almost a month!

My online life has been consumed, though, by the search for a dog. Yes, I am dorky enough that that has consumed my life.

See, when I was 10, I helped out at the house of a friend of Mom's who bred Jack Russell Terriers. No backyard breeder either, she's one of the top Jack Russell breeders in the country. Long story short, I developed a very strong bond with a particular dog, Yikes!(the ! is part of his name) and he ended up being my birthday present that year(she was happy to see him go, too, as he was somewhat deformed, and had every fault possible for a JRT). He grew up with me, and helped me through some of the hardest times of my life. He was my best friend, my baby, everything. Unfortunately, I had to put him to sleep this past summer, and I assure you it was the hardest thing I have ever done. It tore me up.

Well, now I'm at the stage of grieving where I need another dog, hence the search. I decided that I wanted a small dog, no more than 30 lbs. And female. And I think I found her, too!

Isn't she adorable? She's a Papillon whose ears never went up(in my opinion that makes her cuter) Some say that would make her a Phalene(A breed of dog that is essentially a Papillon with ears that go down instead of up), but no organization would register her as such, because of her Papillon parentage. Which doesn't matter to me, as I'm only looking for a pet. I do have to wait almost a month to get her, but I'm filling the time by knitting dog sweaters(3 1/2, completed as of this moment)

Though, I need to figure out a name for her, and it's very hard, finding the perfect one. Any ideas?

Ohmigosh!

I seriously need to try to chart this out....

(this picture was taken from a thread on the "Mr Rogers Sweater Day" group on Ravelry, and is a picture of a sweater that someone called Norwegian Star custom Knitting knits to sell. too rich for my blood, for sure....)

Evolution.....

I love fiber....it's like magic! First you take some hair, wash and comb it, and add some colours, and it looks like this!
Then you pull and twist it, ad double it back on itself and you get this...All ready turned into something by waving a couple of sticks around! Well, I think it's magical.

Also, French revolution=Teh Interesting! It combines so many of my favourite historical things(Les Mis, Sharpe, Jane Austen) so i'm predisposed to like it, but after watching the Marie Antoinette movie(yes, I know it's not historically accurate) and a documentary on the French Revolution, I gotta say I'm almost as hooked as I am on Les Mis, Sharpe, or Jane Austen.

Though, you must be sure to notice the "almost" ;-)

Soupitty soup....

Well....today felt like a soup making day. A cold, snowy and boring day. So I made soup. Chicken-rice soup, out of most of a chicken left in the fridge.
It looks very pretty. I have no idea how it tastes, cause i'm vegetarian, but we'll see when other people try it. I cooled some off and gave it to the dog, but he's not picky at all, and he can't give me any feedback. So I can't tell from his reaction.

Oh yes. And Church. Tonight is Pizza Rolls.
They're my special pizza dough recipe, wrapped around some tomato sauce, Parmesan and mozzarella cheese and pepperoni(Usually I make them sans pepperoni, but if I make them with pepperoni, i'm not tempted to eat them) Again. Dunno how they taste, but as my previous pizza rolls have been good, and I made calzones from this same batch of dough yesterday that were very good, I think I can safely assume that these are good as well.

Excuse my fangirly joy...

But Chris Thile's new band(Punch Brothers) is putting out a new album(Punch) later this month(Feb. 26th)

*SQUEEEEEEEEE*

(In case you haven't noticed, I am a massive fan of Chris Thile. Not the "ohmigosh i'm his future girlfriend/wife" kind of way....those fangirls rather annoy me *rant on the stupidity of such things extracted*, but in the "ohmigosh he's a frickin genius" kind of way)


But that doesn't mean I don't think he is seriously adorable......

Batts and Baking

Today I made peanut butter cookies....Wanna know how good I am? I didn't eat one bit of dough or cookie, until I sat down and had a planned cookie snack this afternoon. And none since. Oh yeah!

Some batts i ordered came in the mail today as well. Beautiful, lovely things. I ordered them from Etsy.

This is a colonial wool/bamboo blend in a colourway called "Grasshopper", purchased from Fibermonster. This is so soft it's practically nonexistent. I think it'll be turned into a small and basic sort of scarf, which will likely end up going with almost everything I own!!

This one's also from Fibermonster. A Colonial/BFL wool blend in "sunrise". I started spinning this one right away. I'm thinking maybe a beret.

This is from Enchanted Knoll Farm, the colour is mermaid(all the fibers are uber blended together) It's mostly wool, with some bamboo, silk, sari silk threads and angelina(sparkly bits). I LOVE LOVE LOVE it, and it is already destined for a certain finished object.

This is a sample that came with the above batt from Enchanted Knoll. I don't know it's composition, but it definetely has sari silk and angelina, and it seems pretty woolly. It's probably going to spin up into just enough yarn for a small knitted flower.

Fruits of my labor....

This would be my handspun now. A slightly less boring colour. I have lots, and still no idea what to do with it. *sigh*


Almost 8oz of BFL roving. I love this. The colour is beautiful. It's just gotta finish drying

And this is the green stuff. It's handpainted with different intensities of the same green, from totally saturated to almost white. *heart* I think it's destined to be wristwarmers.

One of those days....

Today was the kind of day where I wake up convinced that everything is just bad, and nothing is really worth the effort anyways. Usually on these sorts of days I spend the day eating(usually something with pasta and lots of cheese) and watching movies on the couch, changing out of my pajamas sometime before I have to get my brother off the bus.

Seeing as my goal at the moment is weight loss, that seemed hardly a conducive way to deal with my melancholy, so I tried an alternate coping mechanism.....

....yarn. I think it worked, too!! I have lots and lots of middling skill type handspun, all in this same dreary brown colour, so I skeined it up 'round the kitchen table and overdyed it with a reddish-orange. It's a reddy sort of brown now.... Then I used the exhaust bath to dye almost half a pound of BFL roving a coral-y, pinkish orange....then I skeined and handpainted in different intensities of the same green a ball of Paton's Classic merino. they are all drying draped over a chair currently. I'll take pictures tomorrow, so you can see the colours...it's too dark now to get decent pictures(Pah!) but I think the roving and the green yarn are beautiful. The handspun is only slightly improved, but I'll take any improvement.

this 'n that

This was dinner tonight...Stonyfield farms fat free vanilla yoghurt with frozen and thawed berries(raspberries, blackberries and strawberries) on top. Eaten with a graham cracker. *sigh* diet food. Yep.

Anyways, I spun a whole 'nother bobbin of singles(I'm filling my four bobbins and then making them all into two-ply, as opposed to spinning two and plying them) Once I get all this roving spun up I'll have a lot of yarn, assuming everything I make from now on is usable. Still have no idea what to make of it though. I'll figure it out.

Oh! Very happy news! One of my favourite directors, Baz Luhrmann, is *finally* coming out with a new movie, Australia. His previous movies were Strictly Ballroom, Romeo & Juliet and Moulin Rouge. All Brilliant and very original movies. Not everyone's cup of tea, though. I'm very excited.

Oh yeah. Nutritionist appt tomorrow...back to Rochester :-P Then baking for church (cookies+diet=bad, but i'm going to try very, very hard to be good)

turn, turn, turn

Spinning, spinning, spinning.

I'm not good enough at spinning to spin without looking yet, so I listen to music while I spin. No surprise there. I'm a music addict and I have music on most of the time. usually it's my mp3 player on shuffle(A Dell Digital DJ at 5GB , a few over a thousand songs, which is unfortunately just a fraction of my CD collection) which produces some fairly interesting combinations. Ben Harper to Les Mis to Chris Thile to Nellie McKay. Kids' songs, to traditional, to experimental, to opera metal. I love music.

It's a good thing music and yarn don't have calories, or i'd be in trouble(day three of diet ing to lose the twenty pound for surgery. Doing good so far.) Spinning keeps my busy, and it's really, really addictive. Soon i'll be good enough to order some pretty and nice rovings(instead of the coarse stuff I got to practice on) And then I'll have yarn to make things with....ooooh boy!! That'll be really exciting!!

(BTW, I watched the last season of Black's Books today. It's a British comedy TV show. And it's brilliant. And hysterically funny. The only bad thing is that they've stopped making it!)